


Out of the Mouths of Babes

by orphan_account



Category: Death Parade (Anime)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 07:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3927757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nona creates a person, who goes on to create Nona. It's not the first paradox of the afterlife, but it's certainly among its more remarkable ones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Mouths of Babes

As a doll, Nona cannot give birth to life. The closest she can come to it is to take a doll and stuff it with a mishmash of human emotions. If she could feel, she thinks she would feel much like a little girl messing around in home economics class; she isn't entirely sure what she's making, but she can't wait to find out.

 

* * *

 

Nona creates a person, who goes on to create Nona. It's not the first paradox of the afterlife, but it's certainly among its more remarkable ones.

 

* * *

 

“ _Your boy_ ,” the others take to calling him, shaking their heads in bemusement at the both of them.  
  
She can't blame them for their skepticism, as he is at first by far the most doll-like of them all; somber and silent as the grave, regarding the humans under his care with an unblinking gaze.  
  
But then he surprises her: “I want to understand their feelings.”  
  
If she could feel, she thinks she would feel hope.  
  
“And? Do you?”  
  
“I'm afraid I don't,” he replies.

He sounds sad to her ears, but it might be just wishful thinking.

 

* * *

  
  
She watches him grow as an arbiter over the years, and after a sufficient amount of time has passed, she does what all decent mothers do and gets her boy a playmate.

 

* * *

  
  
Motherhood changes human women. She's seen it in their memories. She feels what they must feel for the first time as she watches Decim— _her boy_ —weep in sorrow for a beautiful life lived and cut much too short.

 

* * *

  
  
She doesn't realize what she's feeling—that she's _feeling_ —until Decim points it out to her later, when she asks him about Chiyuki, about getting closer than any arbiter ever has to experiencing the sort of emotions which would drive a smart, kind, healthy young woman to slitting her wrist in the bathroom while her loving parents watch TV downstairs.  
  
“We _feel_ , Miss Nona,” he tells her with that newfound wisdom shining in his eye. “We all feel exactly as much as humans do, and we understand and misunderstand them in much the same ways they do each other. If you were indeed incapable of emotion, you wouldn't be asking me these things. But you are, because you want us to become better arbiters, wiser and more fair. You feel love and concern and respect for the souls we judge. None of what we do here would make sense any other way.”  
  
It's almost laughably easy to understand once he lays it out like that. _Of course_ she created him because she is concerned about the humans, about the system, about their own seemingly pointless existence.  
  
“Do you wish you could go back to not knowing?”  
  
Decim shakes his head and shows off something else he's learned recently; a soft, sweet smile which makes him look so unquestionably _human_ she feels her breath catch in her chest.

 

* * *

  
  
Nona isn't human, or even strictly alive. She shouldn't be breathing, and nothing should be catching or pounding in her chest when she looks at the son she shouldn't have been able to have and raise.  
  
But all of these things are happening, unquestionably, in the present, where Nona _lives_.  
  
And if this is another paradox, that's perfectly fine by her. They're in the afterlife; they can afford some more of those.


End file.
